August 25, 2016

Tractors, smugglers, and the matryoshka from hell


Tractors, smugglers, and the matryoshka from hell

Olympian Update 
A special section during the Rio Olympics

ibtimes.co.uk

The Games are over, and as predicted, Russia kept fourth place in the medal count, rounding out with a total of 56 medals: 19 gold, 18 silver, and 19 bronze. Though the Russian team shrunk by about one-third after the doping accusations, the Games were attended by 280 Russian athletes – 107 of whom became medalists – and one matryoshka from hell. Yes, you read that right.

Transport Troubles

1. The only thing worse than getting stuck in a giant matryoshka: getting stuck in an airport because of a giant matryoshka. Russia’s Olympic team was delayed in Rio for hours due to “congestion”: specifically, the team’s gigantic nesting doll – re-named “the matryoshka from hell” – getting caught in the door of the plane. Couldn’t they just un-nest the dolls to get all the pieces on board?

2. Illegal smugglers will do anything to make a buck. Including – invest in improving local infrastructure? In this case, gangs of smugglers repaired a gravel road along the Belarussian border to ease their transport of sanctioned goods across the border. The “expertly repaired” road now has officials on the lookout for the repair workers – but whether it’s to punish them or give them a new job remains uncertain.

3. A convoy of tractors was on a roll toward Moscow until a police blockade stopped them in their tracks. Farmers from Kuban’ had started the roll to get national officials to address local corruption and attacks on their land. The tractor march, a rare example of public dissent outside of major cities, was stalled many times before being suspended altogether. Maybe next time they’ll hire the smugglers’ roadbuilders to pave them a new path.

In Odder News

  • Dance of the Vampires hits Moscow. Specifically, the wildly popular musical, which will adapt to the challenges of the Russian stage.
  • With a bear on the loose in the Siberian settlement of Khanty-Mansiysk, residents are warned not to shoot it – with their cameras or phones, that is.
  • A Russian couple climbed the highest construction site in the world. Luckily, no one sneezed.
meduza.io

Quote of the Week

A matryoshka doll from the Russian House got stuck in the airport doors :))) nobody understands what to do with it)))."
Dmitry Simonov, who is deputy editor of the Sport-Express newspaper, tweeting on the Russian Olympic team’s ill-fated nesting doll.

Want more where this comes from? Give your inbox the gift of TWERF, our Thursday newsletter on the quirkiest, obscurest, and Russianest of Russian happenings of the week.

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of our Books

Marooned in Moscow
May 01, 2011

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

White Magic
June 01, 2021

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.

The Latchkey Murders
July 01, 2015

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...

The Moscow Eccentric
December 01, 2016

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.

The Samovar Murders
November 01, 2019

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.

Murder at the Dacha
July 01, 2013

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.

How Russia Got That Way
September 20, 2025

How Russia Got That Way

A fast-paced crash course in Russian history, from Norsemen to Navalny, that explores the ways the Kremlin uses history to achieve its ends.

Jews in Service to the Tsar
October 09, 2011

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.

About Us

Russian Life is the 31-year-old publication of an award-winning publishing house that also creates books, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955